Unbelievable

Last Friday was quite possibly the most annoying day of my life. Not that I keep careful track or anything, but if there were a ranking it would have to be in the top 5. I would have written about it earlier, but you understand — it’s the kind of thing that takes awhile to be funny.

Anyway, back to the story. The prologue is that about 2 or 3 weeks ago we were assigned a group project in my Right to Information class. I have truly never been in a group that disorganized — everyone meant well, but only one person in the group even had a clue what the project was about, and somehow we just couldn’t get it together to meet. So the first 2 weeks consisted of hundreds of emails (okay, maybe not that many — but 5 a day for 2 weeks is still a lot) along the lines of: “what about thursday?” “no, i have to work on thursday afternoon” “oh, wait nevermind I can’t do thursday either, sorry i suggested it.” “what about friday morning?” “well, i have class at 10am, but we could do it before then” “no, i have class until 11 and then I work until 4:30.” “well, what about tomorrow?” “oh, sorry i didn’t show up, i didn’t get the message, you did send it awfully late at night…” etc. etc. So finally last wednesday the 3 of us that were in class that day decided to just set a time, so that at least the majority of the group would be there.

That time happened to be Friday afternoon at 1pm, but when I showed up there was only 1 other guy there. The two of us waited until 1:30 and then decided that since we at least had sort of a quorum and really couldn’t waste any more time, and since it was obviously completely impossible to have a meeting where everyone came, we’d just go ahead and do the project ourselves.

The project (I guess I should explain before I go any further) was to test Buenos Aires’ law on Access to Information. Technically, actually, we should have started the project the week it was assigned, because we were supposed to give the government agencies 10 days to respond to our request for info. But oh well. We had decided to ask how much it cost to widen Ave. 9 de Julio in 1993, so the two of us headed for the Subsecretaría de Infraestructura and Planeamiento. We got to the building around 2:05 — it’s a large square building on Ave. Carlos Pellegrini — headed to the 9th floor, and (after asking directions several times) finally found the office we were looking for.

Which had closed 10 minutes earlier. There was absolutely no one around, so we walked back down the halls we had visited until someone told us to head down to the 5th floor to the Dept. of Community Relations and talk to Guadalupe. On the 5th floor, asked directions a few more times. Finally found the office. Sat down and waited. 20 minutes later, Guadalupe emerged from her meeting to tell us that no, she didn’t have the information, and no, we couldn’t just give her the written request that we had with us. We had to give the request to the Subsecretaría de Planeamiento, and then they would find the information, give it to her, and then she would give it to us. Oh, the office is closed? well, why don’t you come back on Monday?

Obviously, it was time for plan B. Since we didn’t really have a plan B, we headed down to the 1st floor reception, who sent us over to the reception for (no joke) the other entrance to the building. Who sent us to the 8th floor, where they told us they don’t deal with the public. So we wandered around a little and finally found a nice lady who tried to be helpful, but was very busy and sort of forgot about us while we were waiting for her. Finally, she told us that she didn’t have the information, but that she could maybe make some calls for us… by that time we had already been waiting for almost 45 minutes, so we thanked her but told her that we could go talk to those people ourselves.

Building number 2, a few blocks away, didn’t have the information, and neither did building number 3 a few blocks farther down. After a few more tries, we found an office with a helpful guy who found the decree that we needed in about 2 minutes — except that for some reason, the price wasn’t mentioned at all in the authorization for the construction. Anyway, to make a long story short, we got shunted from building to building for awhile longer (I think we went to a couple of places more than once), and finally ended up in Public Services. Where we had to climb 5 flights of stairs because the elevator wasn’t working (and we couldn’t even FIND one of the flights of stairs, we had to ask directions AGAIN). But it seemed like we were in luck, sort of, because the guy in the office on the top floor told us that even though he didn’t have the information, he knew where we could find it. So we sat down and waited some more, and finally he came out and handed me a piece of paper with the address of the building he said we needed. While was…. wait for it… the Subsecretaría de Infraestructura y Planeamiento, on Ave. Carlos Pellegrini. Sound familiar? Yep, cause that’s the office where we started our afternoon.

I sort of stared at the paper in disbelief, and I think I might have made a funny noise, because the other guy in my group leaned in and looked over my shoulder… and we just started laughing, because there was nothing else to do… but I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t bitter, bitter laughter. Anyway, by that time it was around 6pm, and since we still had no idea what had happened to the other 2 people in our group, we had to go write up what we had done (walked around in circles — literally — for 4 hours), and what we had found (nothing).

So I thought it was over, and just today I was starting to be able to really laugh about it (without simultaneously wanting to hurl random objects against the wall), when my most annoying afternoon ever got a new lease on life… the professor liked our project so much that we’re required to attend next week’s theory class — the last one of the semester, at 7pm and AFTER our last partial exam, normally more or less optional… and the evening before my horribly frightening oral exam in Latin American History. Which means that I have 4 hours less to study. How could I not be thrilled?

3 weeks to go

Right, then. Here’s the quick overview of the last age and a half, in which I haven’t posted anything: Classes, classes, only not, because there have been about a gazillion UBA strikes lately, midterm exams, went to Iguazu, came back from Iguazu, Sarah and Duc visited, I got pneumonia, and again no classes.

I’m not even going to attempt to fill in the rest of it, mostly because it would take too long and also because I’m having trouble remembering all the details at the moment. But let’s start with the strikes, since that seems to come up a lot these days — the UBA is apparently having some major trouble with its teachers unions and the government, and for some reason these strikes always seem to fall on a Wednesday. Or maybe it just seems that way, but however it is, the fact remains that in the past 6 weeks, I have had only 2 wednesdays of class. Or really only 1, since one of the classes that we had was just the midterm. I’m not quite sure how they’re planning to evaluate this last part of the course, since we only have 3 weeks left and one of them is another exam. But I’m sure they’ll figure it out. Anyway, I guess you could say that school is going well, or at any rate that I have classes fairly regularly on Thursdays because my Thursday teacher doesn’t observe the strikes. And of course I’ve been keeping myself busy with the independent project stuff and trying to figure out this summer. I also started auditing a postgrad class at the UBA law school on intellectual property, but I missed a ton of those classes since I’ve been sick and I think it’s too late to pick it back up.

But actually I skipped ahead there, and now I should probably go back and talk about Iguazu. Which was soooooo cool, or at least the part where we saw the falls was amazing. And the weather was perfect, clear and sunny and medium-warm, which isn’t all that normal for this time of year, so the falls pretty much sparkled and there were rainbows everywhere because of all the mist. I’m working on getting the pictures online, but until I do you’ll just have to take my word that the views were spectacular.

I also got my Brazilian visa so that I could go to the Brazilian side of the falls — the visa turned out to be pretty pointless, since they actually didn’t check at the border, so it’s good that I’ll be using it again and didn’t pay all that for no reason. They also appear to have raised the visa fee to $120 (that’s dollars, not pesos) — actually, the visa is free but the “processing fee” is way expensive, in retaliation for the ridiculous cost for Brazilians to get U.S. visas. I actually liked the Argentine side better — it’s less developed and there are more ways to get close to the falls — but the Brazilian side did have some pretty incredible panoramic views.

Unfortunately, the town of Iguazu is nothing spectacular — or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it’s spectacularly, amazingly dull. I didn’t really mind, but the two s I was travelling with had to spend an extra day there because they didn’t go to Brazil, and they were pretty much bored to tears by the time we left. Actually, I’m kind of amazed that we’re all still speaking to each other after spending so much concentrated time together — but luckily we get along extremely well, so there were no problems

That was a couple of weekends ago, and then this past weekend, Sarah and Duc (from Middlebury, but they’re studying in Chile) came to visit. It was fun to see them, even though I definitely wasn’t feeling my best and couldn’t even begin to keep up with their tourist-energy. But it definitely reminded me of how much I miss my Midd friends, and it helped me reconcile myself a little better to the fact that I’m leaving so soon.

And it really is soon — I only have 3 weeks left until the end of the semester, and I think that 2 of those will be exam weeks (ick! and think happy thoughts for me that I won’t have to take final exams in July). After that, I have a few days to pack up my room, and then I’m heading to Peru. Of course I’m PSYCHED about that — it’s a lot easier to leave BA when I’m so excited about where I’m going, and it will be awesome to see J — but I’m also sad to have my semester end, and really really nervous about how I’m going to fit my life into 2 suitcases when it’s time to go home. Not that I’ll be leaving South America right away — after Peru, I’ll still have a month in Brazil, then a couple of days in BA to say my goodbyes before I leave for the States…

All of these “last group email” emails that I’ve been getting (from the people who still bother to send those out, who have my eternal admiration) have definitely been underscoring the fact that we’re definitely closing in on the end of the semester. And of course, happy high school graduation, John (and Andrew) — I wish I could be there, but maybe it’s better this way, because after working at Chappell it’s hard to face the idea of ever in my life attending another ceremony involving caps, gowns, and speeches.